The Points On My Compass

View from inside the mountain centre

I am just back from a weekend of Hills and Mountain Skills training in our local Mourne Mountains.  Two days of walking, ascending, descending, navigating and generally getting our bearings. It was a wind blown awe inspiring trip and I thoroughly enjoyed myself and even seem to have walked out the painful achilles tendonitis that I had developed in both of my heels recently. Probably something to do with stretching out the bigger muscles in my legs – seven hours of walking and ascending to 630 odd metres drew those muscles out and the cobweb lurking around my brain was last seen heading due west at about fifty miles per hour on the first day. Any remaining bits still clinging to my head were despatched more vigorously on day two although at a much lower height as we were putting into practice the navigational skills we had learned the day before.

Evening on the patio of the mountain centre

I will never look at a map in the same way again. That famous NLP term that ‘the map is not the territory’ holds just as true on any real map as those of the maps we make in our minds. I seemed to be constantly getting the scale a bit wrong, thinking that we were always ‘here?’ on the map only to discover that we were much closer to our original point of departure than I thought. I needed to focus on the detail, chunk down a bit in my thinking and move in from the bigger picture.

Translating this….

…into this

A bit like me moving into business start up really. I have the big picture sure, my mission and my overall aim but when I come to explain or voice to people what it is I am going to be doing I come a little unstuck ( just check out my last post to see what I mean) and some of the detail is missing. It’s just so nice to stay in that place with the long view, the big picture – it’s mesmorising…

The view is often worth the climb…

But in order to get up there and to navigate correctly to get where you want to go, you /I need to do some of the small chunk stuff. The instruction on the Hills and Mountain Skills course was so applicable. How it is good to have a strategy, an idea of what to expect to see on the way and probably most importantly what you expect to see when you get there. Also have a point to know if you have gone past your target and how it is often good to stick to your original strategy even if sometimes we automatically assume we have got there because something looks a little like what we imagine it should. Always good to check with some other point of reference.

So, with the help of a fantastic coach I’m getting down to the detail. I’m marking out my own contour lines, drawing the picture if you like of what I expect to see when I am ‘in business’. I’m thinking big, bold and beautiful and I know I’m heading in the right direction because it feels right. Our instructor that weekend said the best navigational skills are using our eyes and ears and for our own journeys in life the best navigational tools are our hearts and all of our senses. And, in the immortal words of that awful song, it’s the climb, that is, it’s the journey that counts and I am thoroughly enjoying mine, taking in as much of the detail as I can. I hope you are enjoying yours.

Have Ferrari Will Travel

Even if it’s only a bag and you are on foot.

It was such a beautiful day today I decided to get out to the mountains even though I know that I am not really fit at the moment (recovering from radioiodine treatment for an overactive thyroid) but it was just too good to miss. I thought I could just take it easy and enjoy the scenery if not my usual gruelling walk. So, while I was there I was contemplating my situation and my life and trying to find a new perspective – travelling with my mind if you like.

Last year I went to Spain on a walking holiday and it taught me that we can ‘flip’ our situations to try to find the positive and that sometimes by just looking at what is in front of us we can get a cue.

We never really know whats round the next bend...

Then, I was still reeling from my ‘situation’ as I described it – heartbroken, bereaved, jobless and for want of a better description, homeless. And that’s just the point there is always a different description.

I can clearly remember sitting on a rocky overhang in the soaring heat looking all around me while in my mind I was unpicking my life. I could see that everything there had adapted and found it’s niche. The plants that had somehow found enough soil to grow in, the trees that had grown tall enough to reach the light way way above their rooted feet and even the scruffy dog from the village who had followed us could race about that overhang sure-footed and goatlike. I kept thinking ‘I need to find my niche,I need to find my niche’  and ‘where the hell is it because I feel like I don’t fit anywhere anymore?’

What I could also see around me were the remains of localised rockfalls and landslides where the ground had fallen taking everything in it’s path with it. A sure sign I thought that everything does indeed change and nothing ever stays the same. So I tried to ‘flip’ my thinking.

...and even if it is a mountain, there are gaps

Fast forward a year and out today in my more local mountains I was thinking about those changes that I have wanted to see happen. I am still heartbroken and I still haven’t got a job and I guess I am still trying to find my niche so what really has changed?

Well perhaps the only thing is that I have learned  it really does need to be from within that the change needs to happen. It’s not about acquiring things or having the right job or the right house, or even the right partner, it is about having the right perspective, the right lens to look through. I have many things in my life to be grateful for and if you really wanted me to I could even flip those negatives into positives – my father’s death has in a funny way given me the opportunity to enjoy my mother’s company more, to appreciate the time left I have with her and to feel compassion for her in a way I have never been able to before (it even gave me an excuse to cry).  My broken heart has taught me that I need to show compassion for myself and that it is ok to feel a wholehearted love for someone else as long as you can feel it for yourself. My joblessness has given me the time to spend with my family and to really, really find what it is that I want to do. For now, that is to find my voice through writing about my experiences and to express myself.

And if you don’t believe me about the perspective thing take a look at the next two photos –

Now you see me...

Now you dont - well not so much, more blended you know?

Same gate, different perspective. And the funniest part? I didn’t even see the glove until I got home and uploaded the photos!